A bit of nature and some stars

Today's ATC is a bit different, but I just thought, "what if..." and made it.  The background is some eucalyptus bark, which is always lying around outside.  The pebbles are ones I found in the garden (not the ones I bought, which are much more regular) and the twine was just out of the drawer.  It was quite easy to sew through the bark to attach the pebbles and I punched the holes for the twine with a simple hole punch!
I like this one, and it is telling me that the simple things are often the best.

Today is tangled textiles challenge reaveal day, so one of my deadlines is finally gone.
Here is my piece in response to the theme of "look up"

It is my view of the Southern cross and the milky way, which I see from the back steps most nights, only of course infinitely more lovely than this.

I started with a closely scribble quilted piece of fabric

Then painted it with acrylic paint.
Next, I stencilled in the milky way with a silver shiva stick and I disliked it so much, I didn't even take a photo.
I tried using some organza to cover it up

but that didn't work!  In the end, I thread painted all over the shiva cloud with a variegated white to blue thread.

I Added iron on sparklies for the stars, but I still didn't like it but I bound it anyway because the 15th was hours away, then as I sat, thinking, I started adding some hand stitching with perle thread, and I started to like it a bit.  Obviously, time was an issue, or I think I would have added more hand stitch.  Next time I will start hand stitching much earlier, as I think I am starting to want that texture in my work.

Anyhow, have fun creating every day.

Art books

 Just a quick mention, that I am going to start posting an ATC a day as a way to play with lots of techniques.  This was an idea put forward by my friend, Lisa  and I have decided to join her in her venture. we shall see!  She also has a great list of techniques which she wants to try.

My art books, as I have said, are recycled/altered books which I use to create little bits of art and experiment in on different themes.
Here are a few pages I have worked on recently.

This is a page from my bird theme book.  The backgrpound is newspaper painted with gesso and then a watercolour wash, which I find easy to paint and draw on and is a cheap and easy way to cover up the page contents underneath.  The bird was inspired by a card.  It is a little hard to see because it is drawn with a metallic pen, but basically each piece of the bird is doodled with a different free motion quilting design.  I have a small quilt based on this page in process, so you see the books are a great design resource..

This is a page in process in my water/oceans book.  Again the background is painted newspaper/gesso.
The seahorses are molding paste applied through a stencil, then painted gold.
This page will be layered again to add some more weeds and depth before it is finished.  I already have ideas about using painted fusible in a small quilt like this.

These ferns in my leaf theme book are stencilled with oil pastel.  Next, I will put a watercolour wash on which will be resisted by the pastel.  This can be mimicked on fabric using shiva sticks and fabric paint, so i do see a batch of fabric comming up.

I have shown this page before.  It is a ripped printout pasted to the page, but here, you can see I have begun to sketch out the missing parts.  I think this page needs a wash for the background, so the leaves will brobably be completed with oil pastel.

Another page from the leaf book, this is a simple layout for a small motif (about 4") I made using couched copper wire on a piece of woven wool fabric.  This page has a piece od non woven paper/fabric (the type florists use on their posies) pasted directly to the page.  It is semi transparent, but I actually like the little views you can see.  The pink/orange paper is paste paper .

I have actually been doing a lot of sewing an textile work, but haven't quite got to the point of something to show yet and a couple of my WIPs are things I can't show until a certain date, but two days untill I start posting ATCs!!!!